Space For Win 7 Pro 64 Upgrade

Six years ago I had a machine custom built. It has served me well under WinXP/Pro. Pity MS couldn't make a business of an annual fee to continue patching it a few more years. I would have (grudgingly) paid $20-25/year.

It makes me feel better about the program files being on the larger 'slower' drives. Does this approach make sense?

Also, is there a memory expert on the forum?

The Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P has room for four DDR2 memory sticks. I'm inclined to get 8 GB (4 x 2 GB)

Gigabyte provides these as qualified products at this level:

No code has to be inserted here.

I've seen claims of 'unstable operation' with the 1066 memory even though it should be supported. Should I expect more stable operation with the 800? I don't game, but I often open PhotoShop while browsing (with many windows/tabs in windows open) and with them also Word, Exel, and Acrobat Professional.

The easiest thing to do is to use the built-in functionality of Windows to move the Documents, Music, Pictures, & Videos folders. If you want to look into something more complex one of our Moderators, bbearen, has published on his own site a guide to highly customizing Windows 7 - Set 7 Free. NOTE: the Caution on the left side of the screen.

A clean installed (which is the only thing you're going to be doing) of W7 on the raptor will give you far less than 30GB after install.
It's completely doable on the 74GB raptor, so you can ignore the space requirements,
but you have enough obsolescence going for you as it is, this is why I suggest...

Dump the raptors in favor of an SSD, you're gonna need it.
Get at least 120GBs on the SSD and make certain it's on the 3G SATA port.

Leave the programs on the primary and move all your personal data to the other drives.
Make certain you know what you are doing, and are comfortable, moving program files off the primary if
that is to be your choice.
Make certain you have a decent backup regimen in place.

Add more DDR2 memory and max it out at it's highest speed, irrigardless of what you've heard.
You can always step it down later if there is an issue, which is probably unlikely.
(1066 is an overclock on this antiquated board, in todays reality 1066 is obscenely slow).
BIOS and board driver updates should be very mature considering the age of the board.
(meaning the bugs will have been worked out of the memory clock long ago)

Good Luck
CLiNT

Last edited by CLiNT; 2014-03-14 at 14:50.

DRIVE IMAGINGInvest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.

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Thank you, Joe and Clint

The 26.4GB of Documents & Settings on my smaller C: drive is the Windows file where all the application data collects. The Mozilla part is large. I use my email as a database. Perhaps someone has created a better solution, but I’ve had to go back to see which parent was taking what, when, for example, or what their attorney said about a trust. My Documents is on my F drive, along with photos, etc.

Clint, within the same 24 hours both my son (at FileMaker) and you suggested SSDs. The learning curve seems steep for my 74-year-old brain. The people discussing SSD and RAID1 write posts worrying about TRIM and whether or not it will work or not. I know, I don’t need a buggy whip for my personal transportation device any more unless I’m Amish, but, I have less time available to me to learn something new than those who are considerably younger. I do need to pick and choose. I wonder, sometimes, if anyone in marketing at Microsoft considers demographics and the wave of slightly younger Boomers coming just behind me who predictably become increasingly resistant to "change for the sake of change.”

Right now, my brain is boggled by whether or not I will be able to run the two RAID1 arrays I now run under XP. The Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P Motherboard manual has this footnote in the specs. (Note 5) Due to chipset limitation, Intel ICH9R RAID driver does not support Windows 2000 operating system. I am struggling to determine if there is a driver for Intel P35 ICH9R that works with Win7 64bit. I found one workaround that uses Win Vista drivers, but that leaves me with a queasy stomach. I filed a ‘help request’ with Gigabyte this afternoon. Yesterday they told me: “You can use 2gb max per slot on this board, you can use ddr2 667,800 or 1066mhz but still only 2gb max per slot.” I’ve seen forum posts saying that 2GB/slot in all 4 slots at 1066 mHz does not work. I don’t think I need the most blistering fast performance, although I don’t want a DVD playing in the disk drive to stop because it has buffering issues. It is bad enough being patient with Earthlink DSL and the time it takes for web pages to be found and loaded.

2. Forget about the RAID, it's about as obsolete as anything anyway, and will just overcomplicate things.
Go with data separation from the primary drive and a well regimented backup plan that includes both hard
copy data backup and primary drive imaging.
Don't treat your SSD like you would the raptors-separate the data and keep the drive lean.
They perform better with plenty of free space, and it won't be wasted space as some perceive it.

4. So your memory won't be blisteringly fast, 800MHz will do fine, considering that's what you have to work with.
You'll have 2GB x 4=8GB total for a 64 bit Windows 7, or 2GB x 2=4GB for a 32 bit Windows 7.

Along with the memory upgrade and additions, consider a portable 1TB external drive for backup and storage.

DRIVE IMAGINGInvest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.

Lest I forget, I have a 1 TB eSATA to which I’ve dumped C: and F: from time to time. Clearly this isn’t a ‘backup strategy’ at all, but it does generate a copy of data.

I never calculated ‘orbital trajectories.’ Physics and PChem gave me headaches as an undergrad and grad student. My PhD is in synthetic organic chemistry. I practiced it professionally for over 30 years.

The son is a musician and self-taught programmer who does database programming. He started as a youngster, 4th or 5th grade, when we bought an Apple II+ and he wrote his own word processor and synthesizer software using the machine code for the Apple II+. He is not a hardware guru.

I am attached to my RAID1 because I’ve replaced 3 HDD’s and added one more ~500GB drive with my own hands in the last 6 years on this machine without a hiccup or any data loss. With a bit of stumbling I worked out how to use the Intel Rapid Storage Technology that came with the machine to join my two 500 GB drives in RAID1 successfully.

I can see that I can get a new SSD that is larger than my 70 GB OS RAID1 array for <$100. That is tempting. I do need to persuade myself that a “SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD”) can be interfaced with my antiquated Gigabyte motherboard; that it is actually compatible with SATA III.

Were I to go the single SSD route, there must be something I don’t see now that is ‘much better’ in the way of “primary drive imaging” to achieve on-the-fly backup, but a Google search of “primary drive imaging” turned up 2 answers and an ad, none of which looked particularly promising. Perhaps I’m missing something. I am open to being guided. With my present system I can continue to boot and run as I order and install a replacement drive. I’ve done it before; I know how it works. Just how straightforward is it to order and install a new SSD and restore the system to operating condition if the drive fails?

My C: boot drive Raptors have about 25% free space on them right now. Clearly the larger footprint of a new OS will eat into that some. The F: data drive has about 50% free space, but photos, video, and audio are eating away at that more rapidly than at the start. I will try to figure out how much of the Thunderbird ‘archive’ system applies to SeaMonkey. That will allow me to reduce the footprint from my browser on C:

From my perspective, what Microsoft is asking of me is to put aside my very functional, tried-and-true 16oz framing hammer (sure it has some nicks and scratches) for a hammer with a curved handle and heads at both ends. At this point, neither of the heads appears intuitively useful for driving nails. I do have a 230# Hay Budden anvil and a decent blacksmith’s hammer. For a job this big I’d need to construct a larger forge. Perhaps I could turn one or both of the heads into a working hammer after all.

How much longer are you figuring on keeping this system running, that is with the planned upgrades?
Just because end of life for XP is near in MS terms, doesn't mean everything is going to go to hell in a hand basket right away.
You should take the time to plan a whole new system from the ground up.

Six years is a long time, hardware-wise.

Hard Drives
Whatever you decide to do, I recommend replacing the raptors altogether and not rely on them anymore.
You can still keep them in the system as you have plenty of SATA 3GB/s ports, just monitor their health.
Replace them with something a bit larger and keep your RAID configuration if your able to do so.
The SSD you suggested is a bit overkill.
If you do decide on SSDs;
1. Look into whether you can RAID two of them with W7, 64 bit on your current board.
2. Purchase a couple of 120-240GB drives that match your controller's speed: 3GB/s SATA II.
(as you won't get the benefit of SATA III anyway)

Solid state drives are real performance gain, probably the best you're going to get with an upgrade on that motherboard.

Memory
Keep what you've got and add more to max out at 8GBs, or replace all memory with new RAM. (optional)
DDR2 is lees picky than DDR3 when adding RAM to a system.
You'll have to run it at stock, which is probably 800MHz.
Anything over is a mild overclock and your board won't accept it with all DIM slots in use.
For memory replacement, or additions, try to find something as close to board spec as possible.
There is no sense in getting over rated RAM when your hardware won't support it anyway.
DDR2, 2GB x 4 at 800MHz dual channel is fine. it is better to have 8GB running at 800MHz then 2GB running at 1066.

Programs

Is it straightforward under Win 7 to move the Program Files off the C drive?

it's not straightforward but may be doable. See post #2.
With the upgrade to larger drives you probably won't need to move programs, just the documents and other folders.
(optional too)
If you are confident and comfortable in the way in which you have previously backed up data you should be
able to continue doing so. Anything else and you can take the time to do the proper research on.

I hope this helps
CLiNT

Last edited by CLiNT; 2014-03-17 at 20:26.

DRIVE IMAGINGInvest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.